Case Law Review – T 1192/10

The subject-matter of claim 1 differed from the disclosure in the closest prior art document in that according to claim 1:

a) warning messages are output to the user instead of having only internal messages between different components,

b) a range of sampling periods, i.e. a period when the button is activated, is supervised,

c) a range of poses indicating ranges of pitch and roll angles of the input device with respect to the bottom plane on which the input device is positioned is supervised and

d) temporary button release when the button is deactivated and re-activated within a predetermined time causes another warning to the user.

Comments:

Feature (a) of outputting warning messages to a user instead of internal messages between different components was deemed to be technical, solving the technical problem of how to provide feedback to the user about internal states or identified conditions of the device, but notoriously known.

However, features (b) of supervising a range of sampling periods and (d) providing temporary de-activation of a button were deemed to be technical features that provided an inventive step over the cited art. This set aside an earlier decision of the examining division.

The examining division had argued that although the actual implementation of the specific validation criteria involved a technically skilled person, the definition of the expected operation (e.g. what motions and durations of the input are expected) was rather business-based, according to the intended purpose of the device and to design choices. This argument was not accepted by the Board who concluded that, whatever the reason for the definition of a gesture might be, the underlying ranges, rolls and angles are of a technical nature.